CURRENT MISSION

Developing and realizing my creative ambitions

ABOUT ME

I consider myself thoughtful and intellectually curious, always trying to learn new things. I like to walk around and take things in, and I don't feel that I really know a place until I've found at least a few great breakfast spots and a dive bar with a good jukebox.

PHILOSOPHY

I'm constantly seeking a new way of looking at things, both intellectually and through art. I spend time trying to discover the things I don't know, and then I set about learning them. Sometimes I get myself in awkward situations for having a sense of humor about things other people don't, but at the end of the day, it's good to have more reasons to laugh.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

My roommate in Chicago had his own Couch Surfing profile, and he hosted Kelvin from San Francisco/Vietnam. It was a fantastic experience, so I figured I'd create my own profile. Since then I've hosted at my places in Los Angeles and New York, and I've done some surfing in Utah and Singapore.

Interests

Wandering and idling. Coffee. Sitting on lawn chairs, porches, and stoops. Historic movie theaters, B-movie festivals, and repertory cinema. Scratching things off the to-do list. Museums. Roadside America. Chewing on straws and notebook paper. Photography. Music venues without A/C.

• arts
• singing
• photography
• festivals
• breakfast
• coffee
• movies
• cars
• music
• surfing

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: Eraserhead, Network, Vertigo, Night of the Hunter, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Double Life of Veronique, La dolce vita, Seduced and Abandoned, Out of the Past, Bob le Flambeur, Dr. Strangelove, Repo Man, The Leopard, Kiss Me Deadly, The Fly, Ghostbusters, Evil Dead 2, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Andrzej Zulawski's Possession, Hot Rod; anything with Marcello Mastroianni, Alain Delon, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Sr., or Harry Dean Stanton; anything with Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne or Gary Cooper flipping out and going crazy; Italian horror and French gangster movies; Chaplin, Lubitsch, Dreyer, Kieslowski, Bela Tarr, Wong Kar-wai, Marx Bros., Kubrick, Lynch, Anthony Mann, David Gordon Green.

Books: Nabokov, Roberto Bolaño, A Good Man is Hard to Find, V., George Pelecanos novels, The Great Gatsby, William S. Burroughs, Borges or things Borgesian, Ballard, Balzac, Barthes, Maus, Black Hole by Charles Burns, Strunk & White, crime novels, books that explain how to do shit, Vincent LoBrutto's Stanley Kubrick biography, Midnight Movies by J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

I could nerd on about music forever. Some stuff is Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" album, The Velvet Underground, The Mekons, X, Howlin' Wolf, Blind Willie McTell, Son House, Big Joe Turner, Tom Waits, bizarro garage rock, folkish types like Jackson C. Frank or Leonard Cohen, My Bloody Valentine, Gram Parsons, Jackie Wilson, Black Sabbath, offbeat or experimental metal, 60's soul, finding hidden treasures on compilations of stuff like Hungarian funk rock or Texan psychedelia

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was in Sanremo on the Italian side of the French border when they beat France during the Euro last summer. The entire city went crazy, and an interminable stream of young people flooded the street on Vespas and surfing on the roofs of packed cars waving the Italian flag and singing songs. Some kid was throwing dynamite in the street. It was incredible, and I don't think I saw a cop the entire time. I also learned what "vaffanculo" means.

Also, Pittsburgh when the Stillers are in the Superbowl playoffs.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm happy to share my knowledge of film or any other miscellaneous mental junk I've picked up. And I am also pretty handy with grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Countries I’ve Visited

France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Singapore, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States